


Weary thou art, anext my heart

by leradny



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29508549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leradny/pseuds/leradny
Summary: After the Great Purge, Armorer Enara melted down all of the instruments she had made; they had no beskar to spare even for such important things as the music of their people. If stolen they would be treated without reverence or care, tossed by brutish hands into the soulless furnaces of the Empire. Yet it is like digging the graves of her family all over again and she weeps over them. A long while passes before she can sing without weeping. [The Armorer, and the culture of her dwindling people, and the children she's met over the years.]
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. Goran

It has been years since she donned her full set of armor rather than the leathers she wears in the forge, but she knows it as well as her own name. She is Enara of Clan Sparrow, once with a forge that took ten apprentices and students to assist her work. Now she is Goran of a covert in the Outer Rim in a smithy with barely enough room for herself, let alone apprentices. Her clan was once a full flock, siblings, parents, cousins and aunts and uncles, and while they could fight as well as any other Mandalorian, their true pleasure was not in war but in the making of things. Her mother's brother was an architect and she watched, starstruck, as he built homes from nothing.

For long hours she kept to her mother's knee in the rhydonium forge, the ring of beskar as lovely as birdsong, and as her mother and grandmother before her, she followed in their steps. Enara did not touch hammer or steel till she had finished sewing her own undersuit. And even when she began to craft in the smithy, she first made musical instruments to refine her technique. She cast handbells in their moulds; only when she had tuned them so well that they struck notes as clear as glass was she allowed to craft a mould for her own helm. She made the heavy bes'bev flute in place of the vambraces. And then she crafted a piecework drum so she would know how to round the plates of the cuirass and leg plates to fit their wearer.

Clan Sparrow is all memories now, feathers scattered to the winds that once carried them. After the Great Purge, Enara melted down all of her bells, her flutes, her drums; they had no beskar to spare even for such important things as the music of their people. Only enough for armor and weaponry. It must be done, and better by her own will. If stolen they would be treated without reverence or care, tossed by brutish hands into the soulless furnaces of the Empire. Yet it is like digging the graves of her family all over again and she weeps over them. Some were like childhood friends; she had kept them since she was a girl.

She fights and hides and works and protects the children in their covert, as all Mandalorians must. A long while passes before she can sing without weeping.

\- - -

When a child wanders into her forge in the dead of night, clearly worried about her family, Enara allows the little girl to stay in the forge. She does not hammer at night, she sews patches onto flightsuits and other quiet work.

"Would you like a story, verd'ika?" she asks, the usual question.

"Please, Goran, could you sing something?" the girl says, and Enara's throat shutters up.

She swallows. She puts down her sewing. She cannot refuse a child, not for such a simple request. Children deserve music when they miss their parents. "Well, what kind of song does your mother sing?"

"Buir sings to me about... um... the sky is dark and the hills are white..."

"The Storm-King. Yes, I know that song." Enara begins her work again.

_The sky is dark and the hills are white_  
_As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night,_  
_And this is the song the storm-king sings,_  
_As over the world his cloak he flings:_  
_"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;"_  
_He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:_  
_"Sleep, little one, sleep."_

The child falls asleep within the first verse, for which Enara is grateful. She loves children but is overwhelmed by a sudden wave of emotion, aay'han, the one that is only clumsily translated to Basic. It feels like eating homemade Mandalorian food, spicy and flavorful, after months of eating whatever they can scavenge. It feels like shedding tears after a long while of caring for others. If she has nothing else, no hammer or beskar or forge, she is of Clan Sparrow and she may sing. When the mother arrives and takes her daughter home with a weary, "Thank you, Goran," Enara nods.

But she should be thanking the girl.

For once thinking of other things besides her grief, Enara looks at her piles of scrap metal. Beskar must be reserved, but perhaps she can find or make an alloy suitable for instruments. When she picks up the flightsuit again, she feels eyes watching her; not physical eyes, and not enemies; the ghosts of her people. Bad luck to leave a song unfinished, her mother said. Song is pleasant to living folk, but the souls of the dead are nourished by song and story in place of food. They must be desperate for it after so long. So Enara finishes the lullaby.

_On yonder mountain-side a vine_  
_Clings at the foot of a mother pine;_  
_The tree bends over the trembling thing,_  
_And only the vine can hear her sing:_  
_"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;_  
_What shall you fear when I am here?_  
_Sleep, little one, sleep."_

_The king may sing in his bitter flight,_  
_The tree may croon to the vine to-night,_  
_But the little snowflake at my breast_  
_Liketh the song I sing the best,—_  
_Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;_

_Weary thou art, anext my heart_  
_Sleep, little one, sleep._


	2. Wolfskin

"Goran Enara." One of the members comes into her forge with someone's arm slung over his shoulder. The armor is an unfamiliar red and whoever it is groans with every step, voice unfiltered as their helm appears to be broken. "We seek counsel. This mar'ad came from the ruins of another covert. We cannot treat him without removing his buy'ce."

"So cover your eyes and remove his helm," she says.

The man gently turns the stranger around so she can see a dent in the back. "It holds fast to him, Goran."

"Ah." The boy has not spoken, so she turns to him. "Your name, lad?"

His voice is slow and slurred. "Din Djarin."

"And how old are you?"

"Sixteen, Goran."

Haar'chak! The ages between thirteen and nineteen are difficult for both children and elders in terms of discipline. This Din is too old to be treated as a true child and might rankle at the thought of being forgiven as such. Yet with the desolation of their people Enara is loath to waste life. Even if he were nineteen she might overlook the breach of Creed, if only because it is not twenty.

"Goran--" His voice is raw and choked. Even if he has grown to his full height, his heart is but a frightened youngling's in truth and Enara instantly softens. "Goran, please help me. It hurts."

"I will," Enara says.

"But--but my buy'ce," he says, the terror clear as day in his voice. "The Creed--"

"Fear not, child," she soothes him. "I will remove it without looking at your face."

As she has spoken, so she must follow through.

She arranges everything quickly--a cloth, a spare helm, tongs, her slimmest metal shears--while Din's companion retrieves a fast-acting bacta salve from the infirmary and then waits outside the room.

Once the door has shut, Enara sits at the workbench and has Din crouch over her lap. "Shut your eyes tight and hold still." She clips around the visor at a pace grueling through its sheer slowness. Through wires and around the glass, a half inch at a time so that any shards will fall to the ground instead of into his eyes. When the visor falls to the ground with a crack, she tests his cognizance--"Have I cut you, verd'ika?" His unfiltered affirmation is not much improved, yet not much worse either.

So she slips the shears in the thin gap left between the metal and his forehead. Enara avoids looking at his face by covering the entire production--the shears, her hands, his helm--with the thick cloth. Removing her gloves to work by touch, she lifts the buy'ce as far away as she can manage. The pace is even more difficult as such, going by centimeters. She takes her time. First one cut, a precise repositioning of the shear point, and then another.

Din Djarin allows all this with the terrified silence of a beast caught in a trap, wholly dependent on her care for rescue. He does not complain or even groan when jostled, though she apologizes to him.

It has been an hour by the time the cut is long enough for her to take the next step. Enara sits Din down onto the workbench in her place, then she ties the cloth over her own head and tells him, "Hold your buy'ce at the crown."

She takes her tongs to the bottom of his helm and pries it apart with a crack and groan of wires and beskar, finally widening it enough to free the poor boy. As the ruined steel clatters to the floor, she feels for the spare helm and the salve and passes them forward.

"Apply the bacta before you cover your face," Enara reminds him, remaining with her back turned.

There is a small sound of the canister opening, then a sigh of relief, newly filtered. "Vor entye, Goran," Din says. "How--how can I ever repay you?"

She smiles as she removes the cloth. "Live long and honorably, Din Djarin."

\- - -

The next few days reveals their new foundling is disciplined and reserved, more given to watching at Enara's forge than playing with others his age. She is glad of the company, however silent, and works on his new helmet. Once the beskar has been cleansed of the dross, Din sits beside the rhydonium forge in his borrowed helm and works the bellows for her, easy rhythmic work, something for his hands to do as he recuperates.

"What color would you like for your new helm, Din?" she asks--the first words either of them have spoken in over an hour. The red of his armor is a certain shade which she may not be able to match, but she will try.

"I won't paint it," Din says, voice cracking.

"Why not?"

He falls silent.

She is keen to ensure that his soul is as hale as his body. Someone with deep scars on the soul may flinch or freeze despite years of training. Unfortunately, Din's dutifulness works against him in this case. He has not once spoken of what happened to him, and nor has he spoken about anything else which she might use as an opening. She recalls the time spent in her mother's forge, how patient and well-placed taps of the hammer won out over brute strength. She continues her work and waits for him to speak on his own terms.

In between strikes of the hammer, Din's story comes out, shyer still and trembling with the weight of grief. Twice he has lost a family, she hears from the lad. Twice he has been a foundling, become mar'ad.

"And yet both times a Mandalorian found you," she assures him. She has seen enough children to know their sorrow at being orphaned, the insecurity warring with gratitude towards their adopted clan. "The battlefield is wide, verd'ika. It is a sure sign that you were meant to be one of us."

He bows his head. While this seems enough to soften the extremity of his solitude, he still never tells the story again. She abstains from revealing it to anyone else, or even asking him about it. (When he reminds her of the fact over an ingot of beskar, perhaps he thinks she has forgotten. She has not. She is the Goran, and that means it is her duty to remember what others might forget over the years. The Tribe; the Creed; the halting words of a boy all alone in the world.)

Unfortunately, a sixteen year old Mandalorian is too proud to take easily to adoption, though Enara would have done it in a heartbeat. As four years are left till he is of age, Din Djarin calls for kyrbej'goten, the rite of battle-birth--to find his own crest rather than take on the symbol of another.

Enara does not allow it at first. She explains the severity of the matter, that such a battle to reveal a Mandalorian signet will not be found in a few years but decades. And perhaps Din Djarin thinks of himself as cursed, in the way some survivors do, resenting how they lived while others perished. Kyrbej'goten is a harsh and lonely life, requiring all of the strict adherence to the Creed without the comfort and security of a clan, for he can neither adopt nor marry until his signet is revealed or he disowns his people entirely.

But he insists, and her offer of adoption is not enough to sway him--perhaps only strengthens his resolve. So Enara strips the pauldron of paint and hammers the old symbol flat, though she regrets it.

Before the mudhorn, she would have told Din that his signet was a wolf, for Enara's place in the Tribe means that she may declare such things as she sees fit. A wolf is a good creature, though one with no pack is a sad thing. He is as they are; in his red armor that harkens to family though he has no clan of his own. His dutifulness, his quiet yet inexorable dedication in all matters. When he matures he looks after the children in the nursery with a keen eye and a deceptively gentle hand. He has more than once hauled a mischief-maker over his shoulder to bring back to their family without a word.

Years later, when Enara crafts the rest of his armor from pure beskar, quiet Din causes a shock in the covert when he refuses the signet.

So long he has waited for his birth in battle, two decades, yet he has refused out of integrity. Unheard of! It may well be another twenty years before another signet is revealed, and now he knows the truth of it more keenly than when he was an unblooded youth. That must be why he leaves his armor unpainted. He leaves the forge without another word, treading out of the covert as quiet as a gray wolf despite his burdensome garb. Mirror-polished, it reflects light like the pool of tears he will not weep in front of others.

And Enara thinks more strongly than before, _Wolfskin._


End file.
